Senior Iranian MP: Al-Saud Not Competent to Host Hajj Ceremony

Chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi blamed Saudi Arabia for closing the paths leading to a bottleneck in the tent city of Mina which caused a stampede and killed hundreds of pilgrims, stressing that the incident once again showed that Riyadh is not qualified to run the Hajj ceremony.

“The Saudi government showed that it is ineligible and incompetent to manage the Hajj ceremony,” Boroujerdi told FNA on Thursday after a stampede during one of the last rituals of the Hajj season killed hundreds of people.

Noting that the Saudi government’s incompetency had earlier been proved by its massacre of at least 6,212 innocent Yemenis in airstrikes against the poor Arab country, he called on the Islamic countries to take a serious decision as soon as possible to protect the lives of pilgrims during the Hajj season.

The stampede during one of the last rituals of the Hajj season killed more than 1,300 people and left 2,000 wounded.

The stampede occurred during the ritual known as “stoning the devil” in the tent city of Mina, about two miles from Mecca.

Some 131 Iranians have also lost their lives in the incident, while 150 others have been wounded in the incident.

Hundreds have been killed in past years during the same ceremony.

The ceremony was the scene of stampedes and hundreds of deaths in the 1980s and 1990s as pilgrims passed a crowded bottleneck area leading to the small pillars on the ground.

In 2006, a stampede there killed at least 363 people.

This is the third incident in this year’s hajj rituals.

In the first incident, a crane crash over the Grand Mosque of Mecca killed over 100 and injured hundreds more two weeks ago.

Ten days before the start of Hajj this year, a construction crane crashed through the roof of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, killing 107 people. At least 238 others suffered injuries when a powerful storm toppled the crane.

A week later, a fire incident at a Mecca hotel claimed the lives of several other pilgrims.

It was also a tragic day for Muslims in Yemen on Thursday, where at least 29 people attending Eid al-Adha prayers died when a bomb went off inside a crowded mosque in Sana’a by terrorists supported by Saudi Arabia and its western allies.